


Half in love with shadows

by Umi_no_arawashi



Series: Captive flame [3]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Devious Plans, Evil Plans, M/M, Melkor has plans, angbang
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:14:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29062665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umi_no_arawashi/pseuds/Umi_no_arawashi
Summary: Third in the Captive flame series. It probably makes better sense if you've readA Captured FlameandYou under me quite so new.Melkor sends his reborn Mairon back to Valinor to wreak vengeance on the Valar who exiled him.“Then you will be my weapon,” the Dark Lord had said. “You, and your beauty, and yes, even your weakness, those will be my arrows against their arrogant might. But there will be a great price to pay for it, my little one, and I do not know if I can bear to see you suffer so soon after we have been reunited...”
Relationships: Eönwë/Sauron | Mairon, Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor/Sauron | Mairon
Series: Captive flame [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951738
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	Half in love with shadows

**Author's Note:**

> Darkling, I listen; and, for many a time  
> I have been half in love with easeful Death,  
> Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme
> 
> \--— John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"
> 
> Alone, alone, to where he sits,  
> The Shadow cloaked from head to foot
> 
> \--- Alfred Tennyson, "In Memoriam"

_“Do you not want revenge?” the Dark Lord had asked and Mairon had said yes, because now he had been taught hatred, and it burned within his heart._

_“Then you will be my weapon,” the Dark Lord had said. “You, and your beauty, and yes, even your weakness, those will be my arrows against their arrogant might. But there will be a great price to pay for it, my little one, and I do not know if I can bear to see you suffer so soon after we have been reunited...”_

_“There is no suffering I would not bear for you, my Lord. Your enemies can do nothing to hurt me, because I have your love.”_

_“Ah, my sweet one, I can see your soul, bright and pure, and I know you believe what you are saying. But the sacrifice I require is bigger than you could imagine. I must send you back, little one, with wounds so deep no one could believe I ever loved you. I must tear away from you the certainty of my love for you, the knowledge you have of my very soul. You will be alone, more alone than you’ve ever been, my sweet, with only your will to guide you. Yet I fear this might be too much for you to bear.”_

_“Have no fear, my Lord. Whatever you inflict on me, my love for you will endure, for even pain is a blessing if it is at your hand. Make me your weapon, Lord, and wield me against our enemies, and I will bring you victory.”_

_And Melkor had laughed, enchanted by the guileless passion in Mairon’s eyes, and his laugh had been the trembling of stars._

* * *

High above the shore of Aman, Eönwë flew on wings of white, his bird-shape strong and secure in the currents of the air. His eyes saw all, from this great height, the rolling expanse of the sea, the green of the trees above the sharp white line of the cliffs, the small, furred animals that hid in the grass, afraid of the great sharp-taloned being flying over them, though in truth Eönwë had never posed any threat to such innocent creatures. He was no hunter, but protector, tasked with guarding those sacred lands from the threat of darkness and corruption.

Yet instead rejoicing in the marvel of flight, of being borne by his Lord’s currents, instead of being filled with quiet pride at his might and strength, Eönwë’s heart was troubled. For the lands he was flying above were the Lady Nienna’s, wild and darkly forested, dotted here and there with watchtowers that had been deserted long ago, and their sight made Eönwë’s heart ache. 

He had been tasked to protect and guard, and had failed. A great evil had occurred, in the supposed safety of those sacred lands, unimaginable death and destruction, and yet none of the Lords and Ladies agreed on whose fault it was. Even now, as he flew, they were quarrelling over the issue in the noble halls of Valmar, and Eönwë had been glad to plead his duty and leave the side of his Lord to survey the shore. He was weary of talking. His role had never been to judge, but to obey, and to trust the word of Lord Manwë, greatest of all the Valar, the king that reigned from the crown of Taniquetil, high above the world.

And trusting his word, Eönwë had acted. He had gone to find Mairon, or rather Sauron, the Enemy of all that was good. He had ignored the creature’s treachery, his fair words and lovely shape. He had ignored Olórin’s words when he had said that the creature had changed and punishment could do no good. He had done his duty, though it gave him no pleasure. Once, perhaps, seeing Sauron reduced to this would have awoken a dark pleasure in his breast, the sting of betrayal too fresh to bear. But the being he’d met in Lady Nienna’s tower was a mere shadow of what he had been, a pale will-o'-the-wisp instead of a raging inferno, and there had been doubt in Eönwë’s heart, though he hid it and scoffed at Olórin in scorn. 

He flew lower, skimming the surface of the sea, feeling the spray of salt water on his spread wings, the heady rush of speed under his pinions, then rose back up. The Sun was high in the sky, her rays turning the waves into jewelled cloth. Valinor shone in the beauty of her light, as though it had never been touched by sorrow or death, as though injustice and terror could not exist there. Yet blood had been spilled there, more blood than this land had ever seen since the first kinslaying of Ages past.

Were his own actions responsible? Some, amongst the mighty Valar, judged it likely, although none placed any blame on the Herald himself. Others argued this would have happened no matter what, that the very nature of Sauron was wickedness, just as it was his abhorred master’s, and that his path would have led to slaughter and destruction no matter how he was treated. 

Eönwë, mighty warrior, strongest of all Maiar, had no answer. 

He swooped down again, the air ruffling the delicate feathers of his head and guiding him towards the most favorable currents, and for a moment he was at peace, all doubt lost to the glorious embrace of the air and the fierce joy that came with speed. 

Then seagulls came towards him, crying in their sharp, shrill voices, greeting him as kin and protector. He called back, a hoarse trilling sound, telling them they were heard and acknowledged, reassuring them they were safe and protected. But instead of dispersing once their greeting had been answered, the birds swirled around him. Come, they cried. Come see. Come with us.

He slowed his majestic flight and turned to follow them. As one, they headed to the shore, to the rocky beach at the bottom of the tall cliffs, white with sea-foam broken unto the rocks. They were close to that accursed tower where the enemy had been kept, and Eönwë’s heart filled with a sudden unease, an unnamed dread. The gulls, shrieking, landed on the sharp reefs that emerged from the green of the sea.

See? See? they cried, and Eönwë looked, and saw a shape, lying onto a bed of seaweed as though deposited there by the waves, a white, human shape, curled up on its side, and as soon as Eönwë beheld the red sodden curls that mixed with the sand and the dark kelp he felt a dread rise in him, like a cold hand around his throat. He alighted on the beach, letting his talons turn to feet, his feathers to clothes and hair, streaming behind him in the wind, let the ground claim him once more, and, speechless, stared at the broken shape of Mairon. For faced with him thus, he could not in good conscience call him Sauron anymore.

As though summoned from unconsciousness by Eönwë’s presence, Mairon seemed to wake, his long eyelashes fluttering, even though the gold of his eyes remained hidden, and he cried out, a pained, feeble sound that brought blood to his pale lips.

With an answering cry of anguish at such pain, Eönwë fell to his knees and reached out, fingers trembling, to touch Mairon’s skin. “Do not struggle to speak,” he said, “you are hurt. You are grievously hurt.”

He looked closely at Mairon and his heart broke, despite his old rancor, to see him thus, bones shattered, flesh rendered from his body in hideous, gaping wounds, oozing blood into the sea and dyeing the sand around him as red as his hair. Even his face was torn in a deep cruel gash seemingly deliberately intended to mar his wonderful fairness, like a child breaking a pretty toy for the spite of it.

“Who did this to you?” Eönwë whispered to himself, heart-sick at this sight. “Who did this to you, Mairon?” 

In truth, he knew already in his heart what the answer would be, even if Mairon could not answer. The unimaginable cruelty of these wounds left little doubt as to the hand that inflicted them, to the cruel imagination that had conceived of them. For these were not the result of mere anger or rage, judging by the lattice of superimposed scars, new upon old, these were the traces of prolonged and sustained torture, and despite himself Eönwë found his eyes stinging with tears of pity at the ruin of such delicate beauty.

He felt the grace of the Valar within him rise, and heedless of any consequences but moved by the need to act, called its healing power to his will and forced it into Mairon’s pale, quivering shape. But no light that he possessed could pierce the dark despair he found within his enemy’s soul, for that too was wounded, more grievously perhaps than his shape. 

“Ai!” he cried out, for this was pain such as he had never beheld or felt, and he recoiled under the horror of it. “What has been done to you? I must… I will take you to Manwë, perhaps he…”

A small white hand closed around Eönwë’s wrist. “No. No, please,” said Mairon though bloody, broken teeth. “Please, I beg of you, leave me alone.” His eyes fluttered and opened and turned to Eönwë, and they were filled with such sorrow that Eönwë’s heart bled in sympathy. “I have had enough of the company of Valar, Eönwë, leave me here to die.”

“So it is him, then, who did this to you? The abhorred one? You did go to him, did you not, after…” Eönwë’s voice faltered, for he had been the one sent to witness what Mairon had wrought in Eldamar and the memory of that blood-drenched hall filled with broken corpses still pained him.

“I went to Him,” said Mairon, “I went to Him for He called, and I knew not how to refuse Him. His might… I never knew there was such power.”

“He was Melkor, the mightiest of all, ere he became Morgoth,” whispered Eönwë, though even uttering that name felt like sacrilege. “But why did he treat you thusly?”

A pale, bitter smile rose to Mairon’s blood-stained lips. “I do not know. I pleased Him not. I was not as I once was, He said, though I do not recall ever having been different from what I am now. You know, Eönwë, what I once was. I know this, you told me yourself.” His gold eyes seemed to pierce Eönwë to the soul. “I know you have no love for me, I know I must have wrought some great evil in the past that made you look at me the way you did, as though I was some loathsome creature. You called me liar and dissembler then, but know this, and I wish you had the power to read my heart and know that this is true, Eönwë, I did not even know what evil was when you called me a monster. Now I have learned, I have learned what hate is, I have been hated and learned to hate in return, and perhaps now I am the monster you once charged me to be. Yet I beseech you, tell me this: you saw me, and hated me, because you said I was Sauron, the Dark Lord, the Enemy of all that is good. Then why did my Master treat me thusly? Why did he cast me away from his side?” 

Mairon lifted himself painfully off the ground, his hand clutching Eönwë’s garments. “I do not know what I am anymore, Eönwë,” he cried, “and it is a great anguish. I know I have no right to ask anything of you, but I beg this of you: look at me with your piercing eagle eyes and tell me. Tell me what I have done, that you, who are good, hate and revile me, but my Lord, who should love me, deems me weak, and changed, and worthless?” 

“I… I do not know,” stammered Eönwë. “Please, do not raise yourself thus, your bones are broken and you are hurting yourself. Please, be still. Be still.” He drew Mairon’s bloody shape to him, cradling him in his arms. “Be still, and I will try to answer you.”

“Please,” said Mairon, and sobs wracked his frame as he pressed his tear-stained face to Eönwë’s mighty chest. “I will die, I think, and that is no great hardship to me, because I do not think I like living in this world. But I want to know, I want to understand, please…”

“Yes, you were ever thus, Mairon. Ever since we first arose, you wanted to know. Be still and I will tell you.” 

He thought of Mairon at the birth of the world, a shining spirit of flame and gold, quick-footed as a spark, already so willing to fly around and explore and test the boundaries of existence when the other Maiar stayed timidly at their Lords and Ladies’ feet, awed by the wonder of creation. How Aulë had laughed, seeing this small, fearless being, and called it admirable, and all had agreed. And Eönwë, safe within the great currents of Manwë’s being like a feather gently carried by the wind, had looked at the fierce little flame playing around Aulë’s strong maker’s fingers, and he too had found it admirable, and had wondered even then what it might be like to have such a wondrous thing for his own, what it would take to make it his. 

He’d known, as soon as he’d conceived of it, that this desire was wrong somehow, and he’d sought to quell it in his heart. Yet he’d never been able to forget his wonder at this creature, and when all had been busy forging matter into being to bring forth Illuvatar’s plan, he would often pay visit to Aulë’s forges, and listen to Mairon talk animatedly about his designs, his ideas, amazed at his invention and cleverness, and he’d bring Mairon little gifts whenever he found interestingly shaped things. And although he did his best to fight this feeling, there was a part of him that ached when Mairon would look at each present in pleasure, taking them in his hands and smiling in glee, full of an innocent greed for knowledge and novelty, because he wanted Mairon’s eye to turn to him, and not to the present, to look at him with desire and hunger, yet Mairon never did.

None of this he could speak of now, yet he gathered his thoughts to himself and said: “you are much changed, in truth. Much more than I believed when first I beheld you in this shape. When I first knew you, you were not evil, I think, but quick-witted and clever, though perhaps you were never very wise. You liked new things, and inventions, and you delighted in praise and admiration. Many loved you, but you never seemed to care, until the Dark One came. What he did or said, I do not know, but he called and you were his. The evil you wrought onto the world by his side… Mairon, I cannot speak of it. I never understood how one such as you, who loved beauty and creation, could revel thus in destruction and death, in breaking the majestic works we had all built together and erecting hideous, awful creations that struck fear in the heart of all that beheld them.”

Mairon stretched out his long slender fingers and stared at them as they trembled. “Perhaps that is why, then,” he said. “I cannot make things anymore. Perhaps that is why He does not want me.”

“I do not know. I know I could never believe you were truly his. When his power was broken and you came crawling to me, begging for forgiveness, I believed you. Perhaps I was a fool to do so. I must have been, for it was all a trick. And I berated myself for ever showing mercy upon you when you were so undeserving. The harm you did after… I felt this was my fault, because I had made this grave error. This is why when I saw you again, I… I believed this was all a lie. I could not believe you could truly be reborn, and I fear… I fear this was the greatest evil I ever did.”

“I do not,” said Mairon, and he smiled wanly, and raised his fingers to touch Eönwë’s tear-stained face. “You should have destroyed me then. I ended up causing great harm, did I not?”

“Yes. Yes, but perhaps, had you been treated fairly…”

“Do not trouble yourself, Eönwë. You did as you were bid to do. But perhaps… if you think you did wrong, then perhaps you will listen to this one thing I ask of you.”

“What is it?”

“I beg of you, Eönwë, do not bring me to Manwë. I do not think I could bear his coldness, nor the judgment of the other Lords and Ladies. Eönwë, mightiest out of all of us, would you not do me the favour of ending my life? It will not be hard, I believe.” He took hold of Eönwë’s right hand, and gently guided to his slender neck. “Please, Eönwë. I do not want to have to feel the wrath of the Valar ever again.”

“No!” cried Eönwë. “No, that I cannot. I will not. Mairon, I cannot do as you ask.”

“Then you will bring me to Manwë?” asked Mairon, his voice trembling, his eyes filled with tears. “Eönwë, that is too cruel.”

Eönwë shook his head. “No. Not now. Not when… when you are so grievously hurt, when your spirit is so weak. I…” His eyes shone with sudden resolve. “I will hide you, Mairon. I will keep watch over you, and help you heal. When you are healed, then I shall bring you to Manwë. But I will not end your life, I cannot, Mairon, don’t you know that I…” 

He stopped his words, afraid of what he was about to say, and gathering Mairon in his arms, stood and called forth his wings. “I will take you somewhere safe, Mairon, do not fear,” he whispered, and rose into the air.

And in his arms, safely nestled against his chest, hidden behind his long red hair, Mairon smiled a gleeful smile, his eyes glinting with the joy of victory.


End file.
